In Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, what form is the poem written in?

• A. Sonnet
• B. Villanelle
• C. Free Verse
• D. Ballad

Answer: (B)

The form being tested is a villanelle. A villanelle sticks to a fixed structure: five tercets followed by a four-line ending (totaling 19 lines). It uses two refrains that alternate through the poem—two lines are repeated in a specific pattern: the first and third lines of the opening tercet recur as refrains in the subsequent stanzas and then appear again in the final quatrain. This pattern creates a persistent, insistent rhythm that suits the poem’s urgent, defiant message about opposing death. The form’s repetition and tight pattern set it apart from a sonnet (which has 14 lines and a turn), free verse (no fixed form), or a ballad (narrative with simple quatrains and rhyme). So the poem is a villanelle.